About

I recently came across an old internet challenge: 52 Ancestors 52 Weeks. Even though no one has officially challenged me I thought it would be a great idea! What in the world was I thinking!!

The rules are simple:

1. Write about one ancestor per week starting in January 2017. It can be anything from a full biography to just a photo as long as you share something each week.
2. If you would like to link your post to my blog that would be awesome!

I chose Pando Tree as the title of my blog for its ancient root system.  Some say that the roots date back to almost one million years ago. I am no expert on trees, either those that live in the ground or otherwise, it is my metaphor for reaching back decades and a couple of centuries (best case scenarios).

For many years I have been interested in finding my roots. Some of my relatives may have become annoyed with me as I asked a million questions about what information they had and if they had documentation. I wanted to be sure that I had everything correct. Certainly I could accomplish this in a short period since I had unlimited access to the internet. I could have this finished in 6 months. Well, reality has finally set in some 5 years later. I have learned a lot in those years. I learn more every day. I hope to continue to learn all that I can and share those results with my ginormous family. One of my dearest friends, Ms. Kim, has always joked that I am related to everyone I meet. She was not that far from the truth, especially these days.

As most Americans, I have a VERY diverse group of ancestors. Most of them were simply making a living, raising a family, and going about their lives. Not all of them, but most. In an attempt to document and share my ancestors I will not omit “more colorful characters” or their deeds. In all cases, to be fair, I have never met these forefathers but the newspapers at the time have it recorded so I will not exclude it here. Not to elude that my tree is full of shady characters but there might be a few.

A few words about DNA. Should you test? Yes! Where should you test? That is up to you.

All ancestors are chosen at random with as much information as I have at the time of posting to this blog. If anyone has new information please cite any documented sources that are considered in conventional genealogy, I.E.: wills, birth records, death records, marriage records, census – U.S. or State, newspaper articles, old family bibles, etc. I will list the sources that I have so you may obtain your own hard copies, if you wish, but some of the items are copyrighted so I cannot share all of the images. 

It is my hope that you will find this blog informative. I am not an expert on any of my ancestors just well read on some more than others and looking forward to learning more all of the time.

Enjoy,
B